CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive

25 June 2007

Product News

TSMC Selects Magma's 3D Field Solver QuickCap NX

Magma® Design Automation Inc. announced that TSMC has selected QuickCap® NX for parasitic extraction and designated it as the deviation comparison target for RC extraction tools on special pattern structures and real design samples such as critical nets. TSMC has qualified QuickCap NX technology files for its 65-nanometer (nm), 90-nm and 0.13-micron process technologies. TSMC customers can access the files through the secured TSMC website if they have an account or by contacting their TSMC representative.

TSMC selected QuickCap NX because the 3D extractor precisely models advanced process effects, such as optical proximity correction (OPC), chemical-mechanical polishing (CMP) and trapezoidal wires, as required for today's nanometer designs. This tool handles complex test structures and critical nets while delivering fast runtimes without compromising accuracy. In addition, QuickCap NX performs device-level extraction.

"QuickCap NX is fast, accurate parasitic capacitance extraction," said Kam Kittrell, general manager of Magma's Design Implementation Business Unit. We're pleased that TSMC, the world's largest foundry, recognizes QuickCap's ability to accurately predict sub-nanometer silicon performance.

"QuickCap NX is a 3D field solver that extracts and analyzes critical nets with high accuracy," said Kuo Wu, deputy director of design service marketing at TSMC. "TSMC uses QuickCap NX as the standard deviation comparison target for RC extraction tools on special pattern structures and real design samples. Magma provides designers the technology they need to meet their nanometer-level design requirements."

About QuickCap NX

QuickCap NX is used by major semiconductor companies as the reference standard for parasitic extraction. It is a highly accurate 3D extractor that precisely models advanced process effects such as OPC, CMP and trapezoidal wires. QuickCap NX is proven to closely correlate to exact analytical solutions and silicon measurements, delivering capacitance values that are within 1 percent of silicon measurements.

It provides dial-in accuracy and error-bounds reporting on each net, giving the user complete control and trust in the accuracy of results. Leading foundries have validated QuickCap NX's ability to more closely match silicon measurements. By taking process effects into account, the average difference between QuickCap NX capacitance values and actual silicon measurements has been reduced from 9.79 percent to just 0.11 percent.

QuickCap NX in the Magma Flow

QuickCap NX can be used for post-layout analysis in the Magma flow. QuickCap technology is also incorporated into the Blast Fusion® and TalusT physical design software systems to support highly accurate timing and noise analysis during chip implementation. It is used to compute the highly accurate capacitance rules used within Blast Fusion, Talus and the QuartzT RC sign-off extraction tool.

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